


Hard To Find

by Kastaka



Category: Echo Bazaar
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-23
Updated: 2010-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/pseuds/Kastaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As if the Comtessa would let a little thing like social ostracism stand in her way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard To Find

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gehayi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gehayi/gifts).



She clomped heavily along the sloping pathways, still not quite used to her new bulk, ignoring the stares from the well-to-do inhabitants of this nondescript street. She had equipped herself with a decoy parcel, just another Clay Man delivering something too heavy for a merely human courier to bring, but it was obviously still not an everyday occurrence. It was hard to gather proper intelligence now that she had been cut off from most of the networks she had previously relied on.

Dragging her package around to the tradesman's entrance of the neat townhouse, she raised one great stone knuckle and knocked as gently as she could on the doorframe, not risking either the flimsy-looking door itself or the fiddly string of the bell-pull. Wincing in anticipation of the bill as her knuckles came back with paint-dust from the little dent she had inadvertently made, she stepped back slightly as she heard movement from within. No need to be right up against the door; they would only accuse her of looming.

A servant answered the door. "Ahem?" they began. "Packages can be left in the..."

"Finest yak-curds from across the Zee," she interrupted gruffly before the disapproving figure could shut the door. "For her ladyship's attention."

"Ah," replied the servant, rather at a loss. "I see. Wait here."

She hated to be out in the open, but there was no question of fitting through the trade door, and undoubtedly the inside of the dwelling was just as mis-sized and cluttered. She peered into the darkness behind the door, but there was only a slightly scuffed tradesman's lobby and a selection of interior doors, the servant having closed their chosen portal behind them.

It was just beginning to look like the servant had forgotten her entirely, when a familiar middle-aged face appeared at a door-window, and shortly thereafter the Cheesemonger stepped through and regarded her oddly.

"Your mistress does know that code was meant only for use in person?" she said, slowly and carefully.

"That would be because I am that person," ground out the visitor in a gravelly tone. "Look into my eyes and see for yourself."

The Cheesemonger made a careful study of the green orbs embedded in the Clay Man's stony flesh, then smiled. It was a sad, professional smile, one that communicated great depths of pity and attempted to cover a good measure of disquiet and revulsion.

"Very well," replied the Cheesemonger. "A good businesswoman always repays her debts, and so forth. What is it that you would ask of me?"

"Obviously, one in my position cannot merely walk into certain places," she noted absently, indicating a particularly fine set of wooden shutters on one of the downstairs windows. Her gesture was hardly subtle, the form not being designed for such, but she figured it was significantly less obvious than mentioning the name aloud.

"Too big, for one thing," teased the Cheesemonger gently, attempting to lighten the mood. "Oh, my dear, are you certain? I hear the worms that live in that variety of cheese can be exceptionally virulent, even with the toughness of your skin. And surely one is more vulnerable to acidic contamination than ever before? I could arrange a lovely little fromage in a beautiful location, I'm sure, but..."

"I am certain," she stated, bluntly. It was easy to be blunt behind this mask of clay.

"Then I will need some things." The Cheesemonger took out a little pad and wrote on it, muttering cheese ingredients under her breath as if she was writing some perfectly ordinary shopping list. Then she folded it neatly and glanced awkwardly at the Clay Man's oversized hands, before leaning forwards to tuck it in a crevasse. The Clay Man tried not to look too pained. It would be difficult to extract later, but not impossible. At least her sulky bat had not deserted her.

"Very well," she concluded. "Where would you like your package, ma'am?"

"Oh, leave it here and the servants can deal with it," replied the Cheesemonger with a careless air.

When the Clay Man had dragged herself off down the street, she couldn't help but have a peek inside. Ah. Eye-searingly pink. That would be a load of Ridiculous Hats, then.

\----

Back in the Warrens, she draped a slightly squashed cricket temptingly over her leg where the note was kept, and sure enough her favourite bat came whistling down the corridors and snatched it up, scrabbling at the area thoroughly enough to dislodge the little square of paper. With minute and painstaking care she scooped it up, and applied exactly enough pressure to have it open up like a flower between her fingertips.

Items to be retrieved from the Clay Warrens:

One green-eyed tabby  
Three black mousers with pink claw-pads  
Two ginger toms with black noses  
One tortoiseshell with half a tail  
Any one of: albino with a scarred ear, persian, blue russian

Not an easy task that she had been set, but neither was it impossible. She meditatively fed the bat another cricket while contemplating her approach. She had a cat-sack in her second and third stashes; the two of them should be enough for the task. Obviously she was neither fast nor quiet, but she did have quite a collection of nevercold brass slivers that she had sifted out of the River, and she knew the urchins often liked to have it as a bragging-token, showing how close they could get to Hell without their soul being forfeit.

Collecting the cat-sacks and a good handbag for the brass, she meandered gently up to Blythenhale. The best cat-catchers would be hanging out on the rooftops here, and although she knew there was no way to climb and pay a visit in her current state, there were other ways to lure an urchin in. Letting the handbag carelessly droop open slightly, she picked her way carefully down the streets, almost too narrow for her ponderous bulk to navigate.

Sure enough, her still-sharp eyes soon spotted a dangling hook, carefully lowered to snag the handbag as she passed a certain building. With speed well beyond what one would expect from such a creature, a fortunate legacy of her time as flesh, she lunged forwards and wrapped the cord around her hand several times to prevent it from breaking, and at almost the same moment gave a sharp tug. A startled cry echoed from the rooftop, and with her cord-wrapped hand she effortlessly plucked the youngster out of the air, carefully matching her speed to his fall and bringing him gently to rest.

"Ey, gerroff that!" the tiny creature squeaked indignantly.

"Now now," she rumbled. "You can have all that's in my bag, in good time, and more besides... assuming you help me in a small errand."

"Lemme go!" he demanded, struggling and squirming in a grasp which seemed feather-light to her, but was inescapable for the little urchin.

"You don't even want to hear my business proposition?" she asked, disappointment in her tone and in her eyes.

"Help, help, it's going to squish me!" cried the urchin, and the Clay Man was suddenly cognisant of the surrounding crowd and how this must look to them.

"Stop squirming, you ignorant brat," she growled in irritation, and in one smooth motion she stuffed him head-first into a cat-sack, which she supposed would do just as well for recalcitrant boys.

Fortunately no-one was feeling bold enough to make a move to stop her, and a couple of streets away they had even stopped shouting and pointing, leaving her to make an awkward turning that few knew the trick to, and disappear into the Warrens once again.

It was hard to find much privacy in the Clay Warrens, but most of her fellow Men were deeply incurious, and eventually she found a small dead-end which she felt secure enough to remove the urchin from the sack within. He looked distinctly unhappy and took a few large breaths as if to pretend he had almost suffocated, but looking around wide-eyed in terror at the darkness - lit only by the soft glow of her green eyes and the discreet sparkling of brass slivers from the river mud - he soon calmed down and made no attempt to flee.

"Ain't usual for a Clay Man to do some kidnappin'," he remarked, leaning casually against the clay wall.

"I am not," she said, as smoothly as possible, "a usual Clay Man."

His eyes went even wider at that statement, gazing into her green orbs with a shock of recognition. "You're that girl that went missing, aint'cha?" he breathed with something like awe. "You ain't always been a Clay Man..."

"I have, however," she rumbled softly, "always kept my side of a bargain. Now here's one for you, if you'll listen."

He nodded slightly, but it was hardly necessary. It was obvious she had his rapt attention.

"I know your lot are the best cat-catchers the city's ever seen," she continued. He squirmed a bit, but didn't exactly deny it. "Now now, I'm not exactly going to report you to the Duchess, am I? Rumours and stories notwithstanding, I can't see her giving me the time of day, not any more. But I have a little list."

"And what'cha offerin'?" he asked, all business.

"A nice stash of nevercold brass slivers," she replied, "and of course minor details like safe passage around and out of here and whatever you can pick up quiet-like on the way."

"Okay," he said. "Lessee your list."

She extracted the little slip of paper from her handbag and proffered it in his direction. He shrank back at first, but then he spotted the paper and took it gingerly from her huge clay fingers.

"Mmmhm," he went, "hmm, right," as he read the contents, and then he sucked air between his teeth like a born salesman. "That's gonna be pretty tricky, miss," he concluded.

"Not up to it?" she teased him.

"Nothin' of the sort," he asserted, puffing himself up in a faintly ridiculous fashion given their relative sizes. "Just how much brass we talkin'?"

She flicked open the handbag in a gesture deliberately designed to evoke carelessness, letting the light of it spill into the darkened passage-end.

"I'll throw in the bag, too," she offered.

"Done," replied the urchin, sticking out a hand to shake before looking nervous and withdrawing the gesture. "Um, I'm gonna need a bit'a light, though," he added, anxiously.

She lifted a small nugget of brass out of the bag and presented it to him. "A little up front to whet the appetite," she explained.

"Very good, miss," he said. "Ye'll be coverin' me, yeah?"

"Of course," she replied.

\----

The cat-sacks were well muffled in their new dummy package when she rendered them up to the Cheesemonger, who seemed rather awkward about receiving them. She got the distinct impression that the other lady had expected her to fail in the task. But the Cheesemonger was true to her word, and gave her the details of a secret passage up from the Warrens into the very gardens of the Palace itself.

"But are you sure I can't dissuade you?" asked the Cheesemonger plaintively. "If it's useful work you're after, I have plenty for one who can go undetected the place that you can go. If it's riches, if it's comfort, I like to think I could do pretty well, if you let me have a look around?"

"Can you sponsor a military expedition, of which Fallen London has not yet seen the like?" asked the Clay Man in low tones.

"No," admitted the Cheesemonger. "Not without a lot of time that I just don't have, not even for this magnitude of debt, nor any I believe you could accrue."

"Then I must go to the Palace," she replied.

\----

When she emerged in the garden, she did not have much of a plan. She adopted her best demeanour of Belonging Here and Having Been Invited, and set out towards the palace doors, brushing off a couple of servants and equerries. Picking her way around the flower beds was awkward, and she was sure at least one of the passers-by had run off to get the groundskeeper. Never mind. She still had the ace up her sleeve - or, rather, in her head, as she would not trust to the security of any physical object to get her what she wanted.

There was surprisingly little resistance right up to the great garden picture-doorway, but once she was inside the palace, she knew at once that she was being herded. Not challenged, not overtly harrassed, but doors were closed and corridors were full of arguments or twirling ball-dancers or mazes of statues and mirrors that she dare not attempt. She attempted to recall the twists and turns from her friends' descriptions and her one prior visit, but it was impossible.

Eventually she pushed lightly through a pair of double-doors to find herself in a room quite carpetted with cats, all sitting to attention and watching her next move. She attempted to back out the way she had come, but there was no hope for it; the doors had locked behind her, and she dare not crash her way through them like some uncivilised, Unfinished moron.

Looking down the path the cats had left her, she saw an ornate chair, carefully not quite a throne, and on the not-quite-a-throne sat the Duchess.

She had never had the pleasure of meeting the many-rumoured aristocrat before. Her father was not quite of exalted enough rank to be invited to the Duchess' salon, although when the Clay Man had been flesh, she had been at dinner parties with people who had. But from her current perspective, the old lady in the chair did not seem so terrifying as they had described her, despite the trap she had laid.

The Duchess watched her with interest. She took a few steps further into the room, down the carefully cleared path, so that she was not blocking the entranceway. She met the Duchess' gaze levelly. Realising that she was looking downwards at her, and feeling a sudden sense of what couldn't quite be described as pity for the difference between them, nor quite as remorse for assuming a superior position, she sat. It was not the most graceful cross-legged pose she had ever adopted; it was quite a passable impression of grace for a Clay Man.

And she sat, and waited.

And the Duchess sat, and waited.

And the cats sat, and waited.

It must have been several hours later, but one by one, the feline guard began to lose interest. At first one or two at the back would peel off and slink almost silently away; she only began to notice their absence by deduction later, as she was too busy engaging in a friendly, open, honest, but still distinctly competitive staring match with the Duchess. Eventually those in her peripheral vision began to relax and stretch, or scratch an ear, or groom themselves anxiously, before also heading out in search of food or companionship or toilet.

All of the cats were on the move before the Duchess blinked a long, slow blink, put her head to one side, leaning on a hand, and smiled a long, slow smile. The Clay Man blinked in return, in the same long, slow fashion, and rolled her huge clay sholders experimentally, in a manner remarkably similar to the stretching cats.

The cats came in; the cats came out; but the game of Comtessa and Duchess continued.

It can't have been more than a day when the servant came to the door, knocking politely, hovering anxiously, and then entering nervously when no sign of life came from the other side. She could hear him stop dead in his tracks as he saw the ongoing confrontation, wondering if he had made an error that would prove disastrous or fatal.

The Duchess raised a hand, and flicked it in a dismissive manner at the servant. He scuttled out of the room, thankful to be alive. But the Comtessa knew that she had scored a vital point in the match with this interaction, and another in suppressing the flicker of triumph that threatened to steal across her features. The Duchess did not do quite so good a job of concealing her own displeasure. It must be hard on her, what with being made of flesh, the Clay Comtessa thought.

At an almost imperceptible sign from the Duchess, the cats abandoned their routine of carefully avoiding the creature which sat on the floor, and began to investigate this new feature to their environment. Silken paws carefully prodded her surface, small noses and whiskers explored the potential danger, and finding her quiescent, the cats began to climb.

The Clay Comtessa sat almost motionless, but did allow a quirk of mild amusement to the surface.

Scrabbling claws and rough, inquisitive tongues were nothing on the indignities she had faced so far on her quest. The Duchess might have a high opinion of her cats, but the Comtessa sat safe in the knowledge that she could simply roll over and crush the entire roomful. It would certainly not get her what she wanted, but the implied threat was enough.

Rather later, another servant attempted to bring the Duchess a tea-tray, with a beautiful silver tea-set and a collection of small, polite missives tucked under the saucer next to the biscuit. He succeeded in leaving it on the arm of the chair, but did not suceed in getting a rise out of the Duchess in any way, and nodded respectfully to the Comtessa as he left the room. She dared not return the gesture. It would have dislodged several felines.

Time passed.

Time always passes.

She felt the words almost bubbling to the surface, the person locked inside warring with her placid Clay nature. It would be the most natural thing in the world to say, Your tea is cold. In any normal situation that would be the phrase which scored the points, which got the silent interlocutor to open up. But she knew that if she began to speak, she would never stop. That was how the Duchess operated. If anyone in the world could resist her endless silence, outlast her limitless patience, surely it would be her - raised in society, remade in Clay.

\----

"You want us to invade Polythreme."

It was a statement, not a question. She bit back the obvious reply, the urge to lay out all of her plans. This was just the opening gambit of a new stage in their lengthy duel.

"And what army do you suppose we would use to do it, then?" continued the Duchess, some hours later. "And who would command it? Even the Traitor Empress herself would be unable to raise such support."

There was nothing for it. It was now or never.

"Perhaps you should let her answer that for herself," rumbled the Clay Comtessa.

The Duchess' eyes sparkled, with amusement born not only of triumph.

"But the Empress does not speak, my dear," explained the Duchess, as if talking to a small child. "She hasn't spoken for quite some number of years. Ever since the city fell."

The Comtessa simply regarded her. The level gaze of her green eyes caused obvious disquiet in the face of the supposed victor.

It only took minutes for the seated lady to break under such provocation. "I shall arrange an audience," she declared. "Then you will see, child, and perhaps I will have use for you after that."

There was no acknowledgment from the Comtessa. None was needed. A cat returned with a servant; the way was cleared.

The Comtessa stood. "Only a cat may accompany me," she stipulated.

"Why, naturally," replied the Duchess. "Who else could look upon an Empress?"

\----

The Traitor Empress was not best pleased.

It seemed, however, from the mood of the palace, that this was the constant state of the Traitor Empress, and therefore the Comtessa paid it no mind.

A look passed between them, as the servant bowed nervously and closed the door. One solitary tortoiseshell slipped around his ankles as he did so, unnoticed, unheeded.

"I have certain favours I would ask of you," the Comtessa explained. "But of course, I would pay in kind. I know Mr Eaten's Name."

For once, and it was a kind of seismic event in the way that even the Clay Comtessa's rearrangement of features would never be, the Traitor Empress smiled.

"But of course, child," she whispered, in a hoarse crackle that one might mistake for silence if the surroundings were not so very, very quiet.

"I know it too. It's Albert."

\----

The project to widen the corridors of the Shuttered Palace took many months of what seemed to the long-term inhabitants to be scarcely imaginable quantities of clattering and banging, despite the expensive muffling and extreme care taken by the builders. But there was nothing to fault in those who came after them, a certain clumsiness with the more delicate objects perhaps, but such economy of motion! Such beautiful and poetic stillness!

No human servant could wait quite so solidly immobile in the alcoves now provided for their convenience, no human could serve so uncomplainingly every whim of the Palace's inhabitants.

Sometimes the Comtessa wondered, as she moved as in a dream, letting her nature take the burdens from her; sometimes she wondered what would have been different, if the ruffians had not set upon her love one fateful day in the dockyards. If he had not been beaten down and ground to pebbles, leaving her to mourn, and then to plan. Would they have paid the Gracious Widow's bounty to be taken to a place where she swore they would no longer be slaves?

But she was clay. She could feel it in every pore, every ponderous movement of her stony limbs. She could feel the truth about her state, about her people, about those she had been made like.

Alone among the made things of the world, which in Polythreme she was told had voices, Clay was made to serve.

To wonder, yes, but still to serve.

Perhaps one day she could relax her humanity entirely.

It was only holding her back.

**Author's Note:**

> With delicious beta'ing services by the lovely isabeau from #yuletide! Echo Bazaar can be found at www.fallenlondon.com.


End file.
